Open source collaborative text editors • Hacker News Board

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#71

Post by arendtio » Tue, May 07, 2019, 9:08 AM UTC

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #6

I would be very appreciative if Google made a stripped down version of Google Docs for plaintext editing. There are a bunch of basic integration features that would also be fantastic, but if the product was literally just Google Docs, minus the WYSIWYG bits, and all plaintext w/ maybe some syntax highlighting thrown in, I'd be super happy.

Another product that should be mentioned here is OX Documents [1] by Open-Xchange. They have a web-based Office suite with MS file types (docx, xlsx, etc.) that has a collaboration feature. However, the product is not 100% Open-Source (CCSA:NC) [2]. The source code is accessible, but you are not allowed to use it in a commercial product.

IANAL, but if you want to use the product yourself (even as a company) that should be just fine, but you are neither allowed to host the product for someone else (commercially) nor to created a product based on their frontend code.

They also have a demo which you can try here:

https://gold.ox.io/admin-api/tryme/user/gold/assignment

[1] https://www.open-xchange.com/portfolio/ox-documents/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Xchange#Licensing

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#72

Post by manigandham » Tue, May 07, 2019, 9:11 AM UTC

kmelve wrote: post #45

gtm1260 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of data structures are essential to know to work on these kind of projects?

We (at sanity.io) get the work done with https://www.portabletext.org .

There's also MobileDoc: https://github.com/bustle/mobiledoc-kit/blob/master/MOBILEDO...

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#73

Post by johanneswilm » Tue, May 07, 2019, 9:12 AM UTC

You should try https://www.fiduswriter.org. It does have realtime collaboration, export to ODT/DOCX/Epub/LaTeX, tracked changes, WYSIWYG interface, etc. and in the latest version even a document template editor. I think relatively speaking it's quite developed in comparison to some of the other word processors presented here. It does include both frontend and backend parts to make collaboration work. (I did a lot of the programming over the past 7 years.)

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#74

Post by nullc » Tue, May 07, 2019, 9:17 AM UTC

jcagalawan wrote: post #43

nullc wrote: post #11

Emacs can connect to multiple screens.

Is there a setup that lets multiple people edit at the same time?

Yes. It's not the sort of thing you'd use with untrusted parties over the internet since it requires access to the remote x-server, but it totally works for collaborative editing (esp with people sitting in the same room):

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Mu...

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#75

Post by houshuang » Tue, May 07, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

One neat thing about live collaboration is that every single edit is stored. This enables some nice things, like seamless replay of the entire document editing history. We've been working for a while on trying to analyze edit histories, to see if we could predict which stage of editing a document is in, which writing strategy users use, how a small team is collaborating etc. (Main purpose is to support teachers using this with student groups). We have some code here that works with Etherpad and ShareDB (https://github.com/chili-epfl/FROG-analytics), and happy to share preprints with anyone interested.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#76

Post by LukeB42 » Tue, May 07, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

https://github.com/psybernetics/synchrony does realtime collaborative WYSIWYG hyperdocument editing.

Imagine if Google Wave had a friends list similar to Telegram and each peer acted as a public cache for dead hypermedia.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#77

Post by mkl » Tue, May 07, 2019, 9:32 AM UTC

AnthonBerg wrote: post #63

I found this recent paper highly enlightening: “Real Differences between OT and CRDT for Co-Editors” – Chengzheng Sun, David Sun, Agustina, Weiwei Cai, October 2018. Arxiv meta: https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.02137 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02137.pdf It’s well written imo. The conclusions chapter is very good. “In this work, we have critically reviewed and evaluated representative OT and CRDT solutions, with respec…

Do you have any idea which would be better for a vector based drawing app? The data is mostly strokes (lists of points), and individual strokes generally don't change.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#78

Post by alpyne » Tue, May 07, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

mkl wrote: post #77

AnthonBerg wrote: post #63

I found this recent paper highly enlightening: “Real Differences between OT and CRDT for Co-Editors” – Chengzheng Sun, David Sun, Agustina, Weiwei Cai, October 2018. Arxiv meta: https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.02137 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02137.pdf It’s well written imo. The conclusions chapter is very good. “In this work, we have critically reviewed and evaluated representative OT and CRDT solutions, with respec…

Do you have any idea which would be better for a vector based drawing app? The data is mostly strokes (lists of points), and individual strokes generally don't change.

From the introduction:

"After over a decade, however, CRDT solutions are rarely found in working co- editors or industry co-editing products, but OT solutions remain the choice for building the vast majority of co-editors. In addition, the scope of nearly all CRDT solutions for co-editing are confined to resolving issues in plain-text editing, while the scope of OT has been extended from plain-text editing to rich text word processors, and 3D digital media designs, etc."

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#79

Post by lewisjoe » Tue, May 07, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #6

I would be very appreciative if Google made a stripped down version of Google Docs for plaintext editing. There are a bunch of basic integration features that would also be fantastic, but if the product was literally just Google Docs, minus the WYSIWYG bits, and all plaintext w/ maybe some syntax highlighting thrown in, I'd be super happy.

If all the clutter of an word-processor on the screen, is what bothers you - there's Zoho Writer (https://writer.zoho.com) that could help you.

The online word-processor provides contextual options without as much clutter as google docs.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#80

Post by AnthonBerg » Tue, May 07, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

mkl wrote: post #77

AnthonBerg wrote: post #63

I found this recent paper highly enlightening: “Real Differences between OT and CRDT for Co-Editors” – Chengzheng Sun, David Sun, Agustina, Weiwei Cai, October 2018. Arxiv meta: https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.02137 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02137.pdf It’s well written imo. The conclusions chapter is very good. “In this work, we have critically reviewed and evaluated representative OT and CRDT solutions, with respec…

Do you have any idea which would be better for a vector based drawing app? The data is mostly strokes (lists of points), and individual strokes generally don't change.

I don’t :) I’m just starting out. I’m sure that there are research papers addressing this question.

However, I think either could work. The task mostly maps onto editing a long string, right?